


Letters

by shmorgas



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluid Timeline, Grab your tissue box, Jumps here and there, M/M, Multi, One-Sided Relationship, Painful thoughts about things going wrong, That means slices of the life of Roy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-16 07:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shmorgas/pseuds/shmorgas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Roy dreams in Atlantean. These dreams are the most hopeful, and yet the most devastating for him. The language itself is like that. It reminds him of home and Kaldur and everything good that he destroyed. But the past is the past and he can’t do anything about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Roy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roysterr](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=roysterr).



> This is a gift fic for Mashy!!! She is the best Roy to my Kaldur. Thanks to Nika for betaing and being the overall support team.
> 
> Warning: I am bad at multi-chap fics. Feel free to yell at me if the progress of updating is too slow. Also, if anyone wants to tell me how to make a better line break, feel free.

Sometimes Roy dreams in Atlantean. These dreams are the most hopeful, and yet the most devastating for him. The language itself is like that. It reminds him of home and Kaldur and everything good that he destroyed. But the past is the past and he can’t do anything about.

He wakes up at four in the morning with the sounds of quiet sass echoing in his ears and his heart is pounding a billion miles per hour. Roy gets out of his bed because he knows from experience that he won’t fall back asleep. He creeps quietly past Lian’s room because he will not wake up his baby girl. The transition from being with Jade 24/7 to just Roy has been hard on Lian and it’s been stressful for everyone involved. 

The soft light from the kitchen/desk lamp is enough for Roy. He knows this routine. He pours himself a glass of wine and pulls out loose-leaf and a pen. He begins by writing Kαλδυρ'αμ and starts yet another letter to him. They are always in Atlantean, always painstakingly written in a language that Roy always had trouble with. The alphabet is not the same and many people call Roy’s handwriting chicken shit. But this is the only way.

It’s about seven when Lian comes out of her room with her hair all mussed and her sleeve wet from drool. 

“Daddy, why are you up?” she asks. Lian is five but she sounds so much older than she actually is. Gotta love being the parent of a prodigy. 

“I just had a Kaldur dream, baby girl,” he answers, standing up to make breakfast and to place a kiss on her forehead. “Nothing new.”

“Oh,” Lian said, her face scrunched. Roy sighs. He wasn’t an invincible hero and Kaldur was considered a villain thanks to Jade. 

“What have I told you about the people you love?” he asks instead. 

“Always tell them that you love them or else I’ll end up like you,” she dutifully stated. 

Roy would be damned first than to have his daughter repeat his mistakes. 

(This be the line break)

Happy Harbor is still chaotic as he remembers when he exits the zeta tube. The memorial has been set up in the ruins of Mount Justice and tourists come to leave thousands of mementos. Roy finds it to be heartbreaking but not in the reasons that the public would believe.

There is no hologram, no honor, no herald for Kaldur. Public opinion is still sour about the man that saved them all. There’s a memorial in the Watchtower, but that was never right. It wasn’t right for the man who belonged to the sea. But even the Atlantean public denied him there.

Roy makes do.

He goes to the shore and wades in the shallows. Everything is quiet and he can relax. Kaldur’s presence is always stronger, the dreams more bitter, when Roy returns to the leader’s favorite place. Roy is being haunted by a ghost and the pain is so familiar that he doesn’t mind anymore.

The years have made Roy take the happy with the pain and he doesn’t really care anymore. It’s better than nothing.

He takes a letter and places a kiss on it. A muttering of an apology and he lets the paper go. The practice is fruitless, but it always helps. 

Maybe, one day, Kaldur can forgive him for all of his mistakes.   
Maybe, one day, Roy can say that he’s in love.   
Maybe, one day, things will get better.  
But that day is not today.

Today is another day when dreams of an Atlantean and his soft voice fills the head of a broken hearted archer…


	2. Artemis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It had been a little more than seventy-two hours since Kaldur died and Artemis learned more about Roy than any other day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank Nika for reviewing my work and basically being the best beta ever. I promise you, I will repay you!!! It will either be Koy crack or Sterek fic. This, I swear!

There was a stack of letters that Kaldur gave Artemis before he died. He told her very flatly that they were not for the Team. 

“They are for Roy,” he stated. In another lifetime, Artemis would have guessed that they were love letters, letters about the pain that Roy had caused him. The latter part is right, they were about pain, but they sure as hell weren’t love letters. 

“Kaldur…” she trailed off. They were past the point of pretending that he was going to get out of this alive.

“Give it to him, please,” he urged softly. It was the last time that Artemis heard something that was even a bare resemblance to the old Kaldur, the invincible Kaldur.

It made it more tragic when he did die.

(This be the line break)

It takes a few days before Artemis does deliver the stack to Roy. It has been absolute chaos since the last battle between the screaming and the shunning; nobody would really blame her if she forgot. It’s actually a bit of a miracle that she gives the letters to Roy as quickly as she does, because things have bottomed out with Wally and she doesn’t even believe that things will be right between them.

Roy is sitting on the beach, letting the waves lap onto his crunched, curled form. He’s in swim trunks so Artemis isn’t worried that he’s lost his mind. 

Losing his heart is another matter.

“Hey,” she begins.

“Hey,” he answers back.

The silence is awkward for a minute or two because they are the two most stubborn people they know and their track record of being nice to each other isn’t great either. 

Action is better.

Artemis threads her fingers through Roy’s hair and he rests his forehead on her leg. It’s funny how things change because you save someone. They stay there for a moment before she tries to use her words.

“Roy, Kaldur, he loved you, but…”

“Kaldur’s endgame was Tula.”

It’s quiet and steady and Artemis’s heart breaks again. Of course, Roy knew. There was no one else on the planet, save for Garth and maybe herself, that understood that man more. 

It’s because of this moment that she moves into his apartment later that day.  
They finally understand each other.


	3. M'gann

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are sins that are never truly forgiven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LOVE YOU NIKA. Shout out to the best beta in the world. I don't care how long it takes to get to me, just as long as it does!

M’gann has her worst fears come true. She is ostracized by her friends because of her Martian heritage and nearly destroyed the world because of her stupid, petty need for revenge. The operation was saved due to some quick thinking and some mind digging but the damage has already been done. 

It’s because of her foolishness that Kaldur didn’t react fast enough. She’s the reason why he died. 

So when she fulfills her role, she hands in her resignation and goes into space. Gar will be taken care of by the Team. They can be a better family than she ever will. M’gann needs time and contemplation of her actions before she can ever be hero material again. She doesn't think about how long she would be gone. 

It is only five Martian years. M’gann forgot that five Martian years is fifteen years on Earth.

She returns to find that the Team has expanded and changed so radically that she can’t really say that she belongs. There’s a new Cave, a new Robin, new families, new EVERYTHING. The only two faces that she recognizes are Dick’s and Conner’s. 

Her self-esteem and guilt hit an all-time long.

It’s Nightwing that sees her first. M’gann is invisible but he’s known how to spot her for the last twenty years. He stops then glomps her, shaking out of her invisibility. She’s so taken aback that she doesn’t have a chance to change her density and escape him.

“You’re back!!” he exclaims, his smile wide and bright and reminds her of the first year that they were a team. “Feeling the aster!”

She can’t help but giggle a little and return the hug. She opens a telepathic link and is overwhelmed with happiness and relief and good things. 

She’s home. 

(This be a line break)

There is so much that she has missed. Dick, Wally, and Artemis have repaired their relationships with each other but not in ways that M’gann had predicted. Dick and Artemis are married. Wally married a reporter by the name of Linda Park and good God, everyone was happy with the arrangement.

Conner is also married.  
That breaks her heart.  
His wife is Wendy and that makes it worse. 

Gar is out on a mission with his fiancée, they promise to call him as soon as possible, and M’gann feels the pinpricks of time on her skin. She didn’t mean to be gone for so long…

There’s a girl with red hair and a scowl on her face, hanging in one of the corners. She is in a female version of the Red Arrow costume and it doesn’t take a genius to get the connection. A mental voice, raspy like Artemis's, like Cheshire's, reaches out to M’gann and she is almost stunned to hear it.

“If you ever talk to my dad about Kaldur, I will send a burning arrow into your heart so fast that you won’t have time to become intangible.”

M’gann is then assaulted with images. This girl, this Lian, is showing how Roy crumpled, how he broke, how her aunt tried to put him back together again and how it didn’t work. She is illustrating all the times in her life that her father sat her down to explain what you do when you’re in love, the times when she caught the words “I love you” and “I am so sorry” written on numerous letters, the times she wondered if anything was going to be okay. 

There is hate and pain on behalf of her dad. Lian is going to make sure that M’gann knows what exactly she had wrought on the family. 

…she can never run away from her sins.


	4. Conner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grieving isn't always about pain.

Conner is standing in the atrium of the Watchtower and still can’t get over how everything is wrong. They finally were able to pull up the Kaldur Memorial after three years of trying to get it on Earth and failing but it just screams wrong. Kaldur belonged to the Team, to the sea, to the people who loved him. Sure, the Watchtower was an incredible place to have a memorial dedicated. The slow march of the cosmos was beautiful and ethereal. He wanted something like that for himself.

But never for Kaldur.

The one good thing about having the memorial in such a private place is that the League and Team can add more personal images in the hologram reel. Conner has smiled, despite himself, in seeing Kaldur half-sleep, in line-up pictures, on a date with Raquel, as a small child, with Tula and Garth, in every possible moment that could be seen. The pain is still there but the dynamic imagery eases it.

“It’s good but not good enough,” Roy states. Conner could hear him the moment that the computer said, “Recognized: Red Arrow 23.” It was inevitable to run into Roy. He will forever try to rectify his slights to Kaldur but it’s not obsessive, never going to be like his search for Speedy. He has grown up. 

Conner swallows down the bitterness that comes from being ageless. Sure, it was cute when Wendy called him “my very own Peter Pan” but it didn’t truly detract from the pain. 

“I like the pictures,” Conner stated. Conversation skills were still lacking after eight years. 

The image turned and suddenly, there’s a picture from Kaldur’s eighteenth birthday. It’s when Wally gifted Kaldur with condoms and oh God, his face. It’s flushed, the tips of his ears are red, and he looks so much younger than eighteen. 

Roy and Conner exchange a look and then, surprising to them both, they exploded into laughter. It’s loud and bright, and okay, it’s slightly tinged with hysterics. But what are they to do? Roy is bracing himself on Conner’s shoulder, doubled over with laughter, while Conner is wiping the tears from his eyes. 

Catharsis occurs in many forms.

The laughter eventually dies down and there’s silence once again. Conner smells the sea on Roy and is content. 

At least there is still a true memorial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was unbeta'd due to storms, comcons, and various factors that were out of my control. Please forgive me!


	5. Zatanna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having a babysitter for Lian is sometimes what Roy needs in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Nearly a year has passed since the last update and thanks to good ol' rockscanfly, I have added something. So, everyone should be thanking her. Also, super short, even for this series.

Zatanna receives a call on a Wednesday night to come over to Roy's apartment in Star City.

"Please," he asks quietly and Zee drops everything and runs. They know that voice, when everything fails, when writing those damn letters in chicken scratch Atlantean isn't helping and the darkness just closes in. When the whisper of heroin become loud and the agony of not having Kaldur in any form just anchors Roy to pain. Things have been going so well, especially with yesterday's success of Lian's sixth birthday party.

The zeta tubes take Zatanna directly into the apartment where Lian is playing with her little bow and arrow in the living room. Roy is curled up on the couch; the lines of his body stiff and heavy looking. 

"Aunt Tanna!" Lian squeals when she spies the magic user. Lian rushes up and tugs Zatanna towards the stack of toys. "Aren't they beautiful? I want to play with Daddy but he's not feeling too well."

Roy forces a smile and says, "I'm just not feeling it baby."

"You're boring daddy!" Lian laughs and Zatanna's heart tightens into a bigger knot.

"You got me kiddo," Roy lightly jokes. "That's why I called Aunt Tanna."

"I also wanted to come here to see my favorite niece," Zatanna insisted.

"I'm your only niece," Lian states with a Cheshire roll of the eyes. Zatanna just smiles and sparks up some magic.

"Wanna see something cool?" she asks. Lian again squeals in excitement and sits her butt down, happy to be the sole audience member of magic show by the famous Zatanna Zatara. Roy watches from his reclining position on the couch, letting the lights and sparks ease his heart from painful thoughts and feelings.


End file.
